May 13

May 13 Mixing Drinks and Changing Lives – How VA-11 Hall-A Reflects Real Life Bartending

In the dystopian cyberpunk future of VA-11 Hall-A’s Glitch City, the world looks very different to how it does today. Public security forces illegally detain and extort citizens for little reason, most of the population spends their free time being unknowingly fed propaganda online, and the city itself is controlled by billionaires in the Zaibatsu Corporation holding the strings of puppet elected officials. Isn’t it wonderful that our own secure and stable contemporary society is nothing like this?

Yet, despite the seedy future setting of VA11 Hall-A, at least one aspect of city life remains the same: bartending, and all the joys and struggles that come with the gig. Your time in the shoes of Jill Stingray, the barely affording rent, constantly tired and bisexual disaster protagonist of VA-11 Hall-A, illustrates a faithfully realistic portrayal of a bartender’s life. While I could gush about the cyberpunk noir atmosphere and personal writing of VA-11 Hall-A , I actually have specific reasons to be so invested in it: I’ve been working as a bartender for over a year now, and in that time, I’ve gained a new perspective on Jill’s character and VA-11 Hall-A’s world. From what I’ve seen, there are very few games or media in general that reflect a bartender’s experience with such depth and care. And while I obviously can’t share any hard evidence of my work for privacy and legal reasons, you’ll have to trust my word on how VA11-Hall-A represents my daily grind.

Despite being a cyberpunk bartending simulator, the act of making drinks itself is far from the most important part of VA-11 Hall-A. The drinks on offer range from a simple beer to complex fruity cocktails like the Moonblast or throat-burningly bitter Suplex. Interestingly, VA-11 Hall-A’s status as a dive bar – a small, cheap bar run by a small team and visited mainly if not only by regulars – means the drinks served originate from either a bottle or a can; there’s no sign of draft beer anywhere. Regular customers also means regular drinks – as the game continues, you start to implicitly remember which drinks each regular wants before they even ask, and make informed decisions on which drink might actually be best for them based on their mood and current issues, even if they don’t explicitly tell you.

VA-11 Hall-A’s drink-mixing system itself is simple and intuitive, with only four flavoured non-alcoholic ingredients and one, Karmotrine, that’s essentially pure ethanol. You can also choose to make drinks into ‘Big’ versions of themselves by doubling all the ingredients, which seems to reflect the choice between real-life single or double measures of alcohol. While it suspends disbelief somewhat to believe only five ingredients are needed to make the full twenty-nine varieties of drinks available at VA-11 Hall-A, it's a very forgivable choice considering how complex the drink-making system would become if every drink called for its own mutually exclusive ingredients. Part of the skill set of being a bartender involves not only learning and memorising the ingredients of common drinks such as an Old Fashioned or a Margarita, but also being ready for customers who will ask for obscure drinks that you have no choice but to learn how to make as well. You'll even have to get used to mixing somewhat on instinct if a patron cannot remember the name of a specific drink at all and ask for you to make something based on a vague description or flavour they give as a guide. And God have mercy on you if you’re not a psychic and somehow get it wrong, despite there being no ‘right’ answer to begin with.

This aspect of the trade also comes up in VA-11 Hall-A: regulars will sometimes order by only mentioning the type of drink, such as ‘Manly’ or ‘Classy; thankfully for Jill, she has a slight advantage over real bartenders in that her Drinktionary software groups these drinks for her, avoiding the memorisation of flavours, strengths and ingredients entirely. Some drinks also give you the option of Karmotrine being completely optional, letting Jill choose whether to keep the drink non-alcoholic, add only one measure to give it a slight kick or add copious amounts of it to ensure the customer falls drunk. While this is definitely immoral and would absolutely be illegal in real life as it’s effectively spiking a drink, it’s an interesting mechanic for the game to give the player, as various levels of drunkenness unlock different dialogue options for each customer.

“HEY BESTIE!”
”I am literally your employer.”

However, as with every job in hospitality, your main concern is not what you’re serving, but the customers receiving it. Many are rude, many are difficult, and almost all of them will make you wonder why you even came in to work that night. ‘Service with a smile’ becomes increasingly taxing as the general public drives your faith in humanity lower and lower with every slurred and yelled order. I work in a bar in a fairly busy English city with an active nightlife, so perhaps the experience would be different in a smaller, lesser-known local bar, but I feel what I’ve just described could resonate with most bartenders who’ve been in the industry for a while. This is not to say bad customers make working impossible, but it certainly tests the patience of those serving them. In VA-11 Hall-A, the primary examples would be the first customers Jill serves, Donovan Dawson and Ingram McDougal: one a chauvinistic, egotistical tabloid editor, the other an abrasive, borderline pervasive self-proclaimed asshole. Due to the unwritten social contract she metaphorically signed when starting this job, Jill has no choice but to humour their unwarranted comments and respond only as critically as she can get away with before their egos notice. Although hilariously, her true thoughts towards these people are shown in explicit, comical detail.

Thankfully, these aren’t the only people Jill meets at work. Most of Jill’s time behind the bar is spent exchanging life stories, gossip and advice with several wonderful regulars. From her close friend and talented hacker, Alma, to the bubbly robot sex worker, Dorothy, there’s rarely a dull moment within VA-11 Hall-A. Most of the game’s runtime involves listening to these regulars talk to Jill and each other about Glitch City’s state of affairs, their experience with their work and home lives, and sometimes, their fears and hopes for the future. Thanks to VA-11 Hall-A’s amazing character writing, there is always a tangible, loving connection between Jill and the regulars. No one feels like a dime-a-dozen stand-in, but instead fully realised, three-dimensional people with their own quirks, views and desires.

Has a video game NPC ever deserved their own spin-off game more?

Jill also never judges any customer based on who they are or how they present, treating every customer with open-mindedness and respect - unless they actively prove themselves unworthy of it (*cough* *cough* Ingram). Even the game’s multiple endings, each involving one or more of the regulars, are achieved based on how you interact with each barfly and develop your friendship with them over the course of the game. This rings true for her fellow VA-11 Hall-A staff members as well; she gets on well with Gillian, maintaining a sibling-like relationship through teasing each other yet depending on each other when it matters, and views her boss Dana as a friend rather than an intimidating authority figure – Dana even comments that Jill calls her ‘boss’ “not because she’s a stranger, just out of habit”. While the conversations I have with regulars and other staff at work are rarely as serious or melodramatic as those Jill can have, the core tenet of genuine connection and love remains true. The longstanding and close friendships I’ve built with other staff members are by far the best thing to come out of working at a bar and are what allow me to look forward to starting long shifts, rather than dreading them. In fact, I know several regulars who have become friends outside of work and brighten up even the worst shifts just by making eye contact with me and saying hi. However, there is one unrealistic aspect of VA-11 Hall-A’s cast of characters: I’ll never serve a Shiba Uni in sunglasses, and I will be forever saddened by that fact.

Outside of work, Jill spends most of her downtime resting in her apartment, drinking beer and scrolling through social media. Apart from being a depressingly real and relatable part of working in hospitality due to the exhaustion it causes, it also shows off how Jill chooses to spend her wages, other than on rent – home décor. By visiting the knick-knack shop JC Elton’s, Jill can buy various items to decorate her room, which will appear in the pre-shift screen, and some can be interacted with, such as a ‘shoulder massager’(Sure, Sukeban Games. Sure).

She can even buy a new drink, Mulan Tea, which can then be served at VA-11-Hall-A. Buying items between shifts actually helps Jill stay focused at work, leading to a tip bonus at the end of her shift – implied to be given by customers who appreciate her upbeat and attentive attitude thanks to her improved motivation.

I’m not sure I can say buying home décor with my wages necessarily increases my focus at work, but having the money to buy small gifts for myself and others does definitely help me get through each day, and I suppose it helps to get through each shift by proxy. One particular quirk of Jill that resonates with me is her personal ritual before starting work – reassuring herself with the phrase ‘Time to mix drinks and change lives’. This would be cute as a one-off, but Jill commits to this ritual before every single shift. Giving yourself a little pep talk before work is common practice in the hospitality industry, as a sort of mental reset to clear your mind and settle into work for the next few hours of stress. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do it myself – as much as it may seem functionally ineffectual in actually changing your mental state, even a few words of hope go a long way in lifting your mood before work. It’s a really sweet choice to include Jill’s own personal ritual, adding a splash of personality to the start of every day.

VA-11 Hall-A is a fantastic bartending simulator and an amazing game on its own. Despite its cyberpunk setting, it encapsulates not only the physical experience of bartending itself, but also auxiliary aspects of a bartender’s life like the connections made with staff and customers, and how time and money are spent outside of work. It does all this without being overcome by cynicism or false positivity; it lovingly presents the full scope of a bartender’s life with honesty and care.